24 Facts About Vijay Iyer

Vijay Iyer was voted Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat magazine international critics' polls in 2012,2015,2016, and 2018.

Vijay Iyer received 15 years of Western classical training on violin beginning at the age of three.

Vijay Iyer began playing the piano by ear in his childhood and is mostly self-taught on that instrument.

In 1996, Vijay Iyer began collaborating with the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, resulting in five albums under Vijay Iyer's name, three under Mahanthappa's name, and a duo album, Raw Materials.

Vijay Iyer was the music director of the 2017 Ojai Music Festival.

Vijay Iyer has been active as a composer of concert music.

Vijay Iyer co-created the score for Teza by the filmmaker Haile Gerima.

Vijay Iyer collaborated with the filmmaker Bill Morrison on the short film and audiovisual installation Release, commissioned by the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is operated as an historic site.

Vijay Iyer created and performed the score to UnEasy, a ballet choreographed by Karole Armitage and commissioned by Central Park Summerstage.

Later that year, the moving images by Bhargava, combined with Vijay Iyer's music, were released by ECM Records.

In 2019, Vijay Iyer composed Crisis Modes for strings and percussion, co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kolner Philharmonie and Wigmore Hall, Hallucination Party commissioned by Mishka Rushdie Momen and recorded on her album Variations, and Song for Flint for viola solo, commissioned by Miller Theatre at Columbia University and premiered in Vijay Iyer's Portrait Concert there on October 24,2019.

In 2014, Iyer joined the senior faculty in the Department of Music at Harvard University as the Franklin D and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts.

From 2013 to 2021, Vijay Iyer was the artistic director of the International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Previously, Vijay Iyer was a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music, New York University, The New School and the School for Improvisational Music.

Vijay Iyer's writings have appeared in various journals and anthologies.

Vijay Iyer can be seen as a contemporary musicologist who is most interested in researching not historical but improvisational music.

Vijay Iyer is aside from that a Steinway artist and uses Ableton Live software.

Vijay Iyer's recording Uneasy was listed among the best albums of 2021 in Pitchfork, The New Yorker, JazzTimes, The Boston Globe, PopMatters, and the ArtsFuse jazz critics' poll.

Vijay Iyer received the 2003 Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2006 fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and commissioning grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Creative Capital, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the American Composers Forum, Chamber Music America and Meet the Composer.

Vijay Iyer was named one of the "50 most influential global Indians" by GQ India and he received the 2010 India Abroad Publisher's Award for Special Excellence.

Vijay Iyer was awarded a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the 2012 Greenfield Prize for Music, and an unprecedented "quintuple crown" in the 2012 DownBeat International Jazz Critics Poll, in which he was voted Artist of the Year, Pianist of the Year, Small Group of the Year, Album of the Year and Rising Star Composer of the Year.

Vijay Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur fellowship, a 2013 Trailblazer Award by the Association of South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment, and a 2013 ECHO Award for Best Jazz Pianist.

Vijay Iyer was voted 2014 Pianist of the Year and 2015 Jazz Artist of the Year in the DownBeat International Jazz Critics Poll.

Vijay Iyer was voted Artist of the Year in JazzTimess 2017 Critics' Poll and the 2017 Readers' Poll.